Somewhere, there is a reading group for every woman.
There is a mystery novel reading group, a women’s history reading group and another that reads only African-American literature. There’s a gay, lesbian and bisexual reading group, a spirituality reading group, a metaphysics reading group, a metaethics reading group, a futurist reading group and a philosophy reading group.
There are feminist reading groups, mother-daughter reading groups, teen reading groups and children’s reading groups.
Chicago’s One Book, One City program is arguably the largest reading group in the world. On the opposite end of the scale, there are tightly focused reading groups, like the one dedicated solely to the works of existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger.
Oprah Winfrey called a halt to her on-air reading group, but lots of big media organizations have jumped into the void. ABC’s “Good Morning America” offers Read This, NBC’s “Today Show” picks a book every month and USA Today has launched a book club. The Tribune’s WomanNews section recently concluded its Summer Book Club.
There are dozens of Internet reading groups and reading guides; of course, they are conveniently linked with Amazon.com, the huge online bookseller.
But most reading groups are composed of women who meet once a month at each other’s homes, or at some cozy cafe, and chat for a couple of hours about a current best seller.
Except for one group. Its members recently gathered at a seemingly unlikely venue: Arlington Park racetrack. Why the racetrack? Because the glistening green grass and sinewy steeds provided the perfect setting to discuss and dissect the group’s book selection, “Seabiscuit: An American Legend,” by Laura Hillenbrand.
Luckily for the reading group, somebody’s father-in-law knew a bigwig at the track; he arranged for the members to meet over lunch in the plush, air-conditioned club room.
The reading group members, many of whom became friends in law school at the University of Michigan, said reading “Seabiscuit” had opened up a whole new world for them.
“Before, I’d look at the name of a horse and say, `I like Slam Dancer,’ and I’d bet on him,” says Jenny Friedes of Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood. “Now, I can read a racing form and understand weights and furlongs. There’s tons of information.”
When the announcer said a horse was “scratched,” Hilda Harris Piell says, “we know what that means. For the 10th day in a row, it’s a `fast track.’ The book introduced us to a whole new lingo.”
Other members agreed author Hillenbrand had introduced not only a new lingo, but a new world: Depression-era America. At a time when people were hungry for any pastime that would distract them from the worry over where they could find their next meal, along came a racehorse with “more natural inclination to run than any horse I have ever seen,” said one expert quoted in the book. Long before Michael Jordan or Sammy Sosa, Seabiscuit was a superhero.
“I fell in love with him,” says Lisa Cardonick of Glencoe, a stay-at-home mom who is finishing a degree in counseling. “I felt close to him, especially when they called him `The Biscuit.'”
The group lauded Hillenbrand. “The author struck a fine balance,” Friedes says. “The book could have turned into `Mr. Ed’ or `The Incredible Journey.’ Seabiscuit was an animal, but also an incredible commodity for making money. Makes you wonder about the values of [that] world, placing bets on animals.”
Members of the group did some of that, stepping up to the betting windows to try their luck. After placing a bet in Race No. 7, Harris Piell won $3.40.
“It feels really good to win, but I’ll keep my day job,” she says.
The group’s big winner was Jennifer Ruzumna of Wilmette, who bet on a mare named Redhiya and went to the winner’s window to pick up her $21.
“I don’t know what to do with my $21–buy the next reading group book, I guess,” Ruzumna says. Ruzumna, a clinical psychologist, brought along her 6-week-old son, Adam; he is not the first child to attend a meeting. When the group was formed in 1994, the group was childless. Now they joke about now having 13 1/2 kids among them. (That one-half is accounted for by Joan Solomon of Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood, who is pregnant).
Revisiting their past
The group formed because the women missed the kind of literature they had read in their college English classes.
“We also had a desire to get together with friends,” says Harris Piell, a lawyer and founding member of the group.
“We were working so hard at that time, no one had time to read,” says Sandy Raitt, a former lawyer and now a legal recruiter who lives in Buffalo Grove. “Being in a group forces us to read a good book once a month.”
The group has taken only one other field trip; together they saw a performance of “The Vagina Monologues,” the play by Eve Ensler, on a Chicago stage. Usually, they gather at each other’s homes once a month.
When they first began meeting, they hired a facilitator to lead their discussion and make it “more serious,” Raitt says. “She kept us on topic.”
Members paid $7 each to cover the facilitator’s fee, but the extra charge forced some to drop out, Raitt says. When the facilitator left to earn a PhD, they began meeting without a paid leader.
“A facilitator just seems to be something some groups like to have to keep everything more businesslike and less chit-chat,” says Carol Fitzgerald, president and co-founder of the Book Report Network, an Internet reading guide service that attracts 75,000 visitors each month.
In a recent survey completed by the network, 12 percent of respondents said they hired a facilitator, Fitzgerald says.
Many more group members–55 percent–said they rotated leadership among themselves; another 18 percent said the same member of their group always served as leader.
Fitting the profile
The University of Michigan friends’ reading group fits the profile of most groups, Fitzgerald says. In the network’s survey, completed last year, of nearly 700 members of reading groups, half of the poll’s respondents said they rotate among group members’ homes. Ninety-five percent of members are women; 61 percent meet once a month.
About 34 percent hold postgraduate degrees; 23 percent said their family income was $100,000 or more a year; 28 percent were professionals. Nearly 57 percent had children and 58 percent placed themselves in the 35- to 55-year-old age group.
“Over the past five years, reading groups have exploded in popularity. It’s chic to be in one, very in-the-mode,” Fitzgerald says. “The reason is that reading is an extremely private, personal experience. People need to find other people who have read a book so they can share the experience.”
She says a reading group offers women a way to bond.
“Women used to have Tupperware parties or coffee klatches, where they’d get together to talk about their children,” while men traditionally gathered at sporting events, she says.
“Men become friends by sitting together and rooting for a team. Today, women can take away that experience over a book and it’s very exciting.”
Fitzgerald also says Americans like to be in reading groups because they are “lemmings.”
“They love to be told what to do,” she says. “You go into a book store or a library and there are all these great books and you don’t know what to read. The reading group acts as your filter.”
Having a book selected by a large media company is often a sure-fire path to the best-seller list, Fitzgerald says. “It’s easy to see why publishers are so hungry to get their books onto the `Good Morning America’ show.”
A reading group is also a successful marketing ploy for bookstores.
Roberta Rubin, owner of the Book Stall in Winnetka, launched her first reading group 20 years ago.
“It was a good way to get people into the store and a very nice way to talk about a book,” she says. “There’s a social element to it, especially for women.”
Others say being in a reading group leads to a better understanding of a book.
“For people who have read all their lives, it’s a logical extension of being a reader,” says Ann Christopherson, co-owner of Women & Children First bookstore in Chicago. “You hear others’ opinions and observations and it’s a way to look deeper into a book.”
Discussing what they read
Deb Robertson, director of public programs for the American Library Association, says people join reading groups because they “recognize it is much more satisfying to talk about a book after you’ve read it. Otherwise, you just stick it back on the shelf and forget about it. People love to share what they’ve read.”
Women also “want to talk about something more stimulating than what they’re making for dinner or what their kids did today,” Robertson says. “They want something deeper and more intellectual.”
The American Library Association found, in a 1998 survey, that 60 percent of the nation’s libraries host book discussions. The survey also found that book groups and readings by authors are the top two most popular literacy programs.
In any reading group, there is almost always at least one educator or extremely well-read member who reads “with a different eye,” Fitzgerald says.
“The members will look to that person to bring something extra to the group. When you read a book, you read through one lens–yours. But when you come to a group, you hear 12 to 15 different voices who will bring up things you never thought of.”
For the readers who wrapped up their recent meeting at Arlington Park racetrack, being in a group offers one more benefit.
“One thing I love about being in a book club,” says Cardonick, “is that I read books I would never have picked out to read.”
